


Keeping This Together

by buckysbears (DrZebra)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Gender Identity, Nonbinary Character, because their 2a relationship is so interesting and i havent really written anything from that time, takes place in 2a so theres a lot to do with the stuff fitz was dealing with then, the brain injury and the aphasia and the isolation, this kind of turned into a daisyfitz relationship study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-17 00:13:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11263980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrZebra/pseuds/buckysbears
Summary: Fitz asks for Skye's help with a personal matter, and she doesn't know why he's coming to her about it. But she's just happy they're talking, moving past the strained place they've found their friendship in lately.What they end up with isn't what either of them had been expecting.





	Keeping This Together

**Author's Note:**

> this was a pride prompt but i figured it was too long to post with the others. prompt asked for nonbinary fitz

The knock on her door is quiet. Nervous, Skye thinks. The kind of knock where you’re not sure it was even meant to be heard.

She sets her laptop down, brushes back her bangs (which she’s still getting used to, always tickling her forehead), and answers the door.

Fitz isn’t looking at her. He’s staring down at his hands, which are clasped in front of him, wringing anxiously. Skye is surprised he’s here, but pleasantly so. It’s been a while since he’s sought her out like this. If it were a mission, May would’ve gotten her, so she’s sure this is something personal.

She smiles at him, though he doesn’t look up to see it. “What’s up?”

“C-Can I- um—” He waves his hand. “Talk? Talk to you. A-About something.”

A niggling of worry growing in her gut, Skye nods, and scoots back from the door. “Yeah, of course. Come on in.”

Fitz enters cautiously, and hovers in the middle of the room. He seems too nervous to even shoot a look of distaste at Skye’s mess, and that’s how she knows something is wrong. Usually he’ll at least make a comment, the standard joke about a tornado sweeping through, or laugh as he shoves her stuff to the corner of the bed. But he doesn’t. He just stands there.

Skye tosses some of her clothes onto the floor, and then pats the newly-tidied bed, taking a seat herself propped against the headrest. Fitz sits, scratching a fingernail idly at a spot on his pants, not looking at her.

Things have been different since his injury. And especially since Jemma had left. He’d grown isolated, and Skye doesn’t know who to blame for it. It seems cruel to blame him, though that’s the easiest option. Should she blame herself? Surely, she must have had some part in it. She’d tried, of course. She just didn’t know how to act around him anymore. And no matter what she did, it seemed like the wrong answer.

She tries to act like nothing’s different. But it is. Things are different. And she doesn’t think either of them know how to cope with that.

And Jemma’s back now, which hasn’t seemed to fix anything. Not that Skye thought it would, she’d just … hoped, maybe foolishly. Hoped that something would change.

“What’s up, Fitz?” Skye asks, going for a light tone, unsure how it lands.

“Um.” Fitz scratches at his cheek, eyes aimed at the floor. “Y-You know I’m- uh- nonbi- non …”

“Nonbinary?” Skye guesses.

He nods quickly. “Right. Nonbinary. I-I’ve just been thinking- um- thinking lately … If- Had I not told you … you would-wouldn’t have known.”

“Yeah,” Skye says. “I didn’t guess until you told me.”

“Right, ‘cause you can’t …” Fitz motions to himself.

“Can’t what?”

“Um—” He closes his eyes, brows furrowing, and motions again.

Skye waits for him to continue. She never knows what to do at times like this. Does she wait? Does she try to help? Sometimes he just gets frustrated when she guesses, because sometimes she can only guess wrong.

“Tell!” he finally finds, eyes popping open. “You can’t tell.”

“Right. Okay.”

“And I- I- I think …” He gives a short, frustrated sigh, eyes finding the ceiling.

Skye waits, mouth twisting, but he doesn’t seem like he’s going to continue. “Do you … want people to be able to tell?” she asks.

Fitz snaps, then points to her, nodding. “Yes, that.”

“Okay.” Skye nods, thinking for a moment. “You mean you want your clothes and stuff to reflect it?”

Fitz nods again.

“So we’re finding your aesthetic.”

“Um—” Fitz reaches up to tug on his ear. “Y-Yeah.”

Skye smiles. “I can work with that.”

-

“Okay, try this on.”

Skye tosses the garment at Fitz on the bed, and he jerks back before it lands on his head. He takes it and holds it out in front of him, face screwing up.

“Th-This is …”

Skye props her fists on her hips as she waits for him to continue.

“A dress,” he settles on.

“Yes, I know.”

“It’s …”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Girly.”

Skye rolls her eyes. “Kind of hypocritical for you to be gendering clothing right now, isn’t it? And anyway, we’re just, you know—” She motions with her hands. “-throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. You dress pretty masculine right now, so I figure we go to the other end and work our way back.”

Fitz just stares up at her, so she huffs.

“Just try it on. This isn’t going to work if you resist me at every turn.”

“Fine.”

Fitz stands, slipping off his oversized, grey cardigan and letting it fall to the bed. He starts to unbutton his shirt, but struggles with the buttons as his hands shake.

“Do you need—”

“No.”

“Okay,” Skye says, stepping back. She busies herself at her closet, rifling through clothes that she’s not really looking at, just to take the attention off of him.

Eventually, she hears him drop his shirt on the floor, then his pants. She doesn’t turn around as he pulls the sundress over his head.

He mumbles something.

“What?”

“S’tight.”

She turns. There’s a bright blush on his cheeks, and he looks away from her, picking aimlessly at the fabric of the dress. He’s right, it’s tight on him, but he’s not that much taller than her, and the dress still goes to his knees.

“It is a little tight,” she says. “It’s the biggest one I have, though. Jemma might have another one, though I doubt it would be any bigger. We could ask her—”

He cuts her off with a quick shake of the head.

“Okay,” she says easily. “Well, anyway, it’s just to get an idea. It doesn’t really have to fit.”

He keeps looking down at the floor. Slowly, she walks over to him, puts her hands on his shoulders, and steers him in front of the full-length mirror.

“What do you think?”

He peeks up cautiously, giving himself a slow up-and-down. He looks away again, and shrugs.

“You don’t like it.”

He swallows, and shakes his head.

“Well, that’s okay. We’re just trying stuff out.”

“Ca-Can I …?” He waggles his hand.

She waits for him to continue.

“Um- Take- Take it off now?”

“Of course.”

He raises his arms and grabs the back of the dress’s neck, and Skye swats his hands away.

“Not like that, you’re gonna stretch it. Here, raise your arms.”

Fitz glares suspiciously at her in the mirror, but slowly raises his arms above his head. Skye gathers the bottom of the fabric in her hands and smoothly pulls the dress up and slips it over his head. The blush hasn’t left Fitz’s cheeks.

“Alright, before we try something else, we’re getting the nail polish.”

Fitz’s nose screws up. “But i-it- it smells.”

“Oh come on, you big baby, just try it. If you don’t like it, we’ll take it off.”

Fitz lets out a short sigh, but doesn’t object further. He goes to pick his shirt up off the floor.

“Do you want to get nail polish on your clothes?” Skye asks.

He blinks back at her. “No?”

“Then don’t put your shirt back on yet.”

“It’s freezing.”

“Then get under the covers.”

Fitz goes and slips under the covers on the bed. Skye takes her makeup box out of her bottom drawer and starts digging through it, humming tunelessly. She narrows it down to two colors, then turns with both of them dangling from her fingers. She laughs when she spots Fitz huddled on the bed with the covers drawn up to his chin.

“Well, that’s not gonna work.”

Reluctantly, he drops the covers to around his waist.

“Okay, which color?”

Fitz looks at them both, and shrugs.

“Seriously? You have no opinion?”

His mouth twists, then he shakes his head.

Skye groans dramatically. “Alright, fine. We’re going with ‘Purrfectly Plum’.”

She grabs a towel and drapes it over his legs, which are crossed beneath the covers, drops a book onto the towel to set the polish on, and then plops in front of him. She grabs his hands and tugs until he holds them in front of him, then unscrews the cap.

She works slowly, applying the polish carefully around his hands’ soft shaking, taking a while to finish the first coat. For a while they don’t speak, and she wonders if he’s just trying not to complain about the smell, or if he really has nothing to say. Or if he has too much to say. She feels like that sometimes.

She should probably ask him what prompted all this. Ask him why he was worried about this now, when he’s never brought it up in the past. When he never seemed to worry about how he dressed, how he came off to others. Ask him why he came to her about this, when he could’ve gone to Jemma. She should’ve asked him a lot of things.

What she says instead is, “I’ve missed you.”

Fitz starts, and Skye steadies his hands.

She glances up at him nervously, and then starts on painting the second coat. “I mean … I don’t know. I miss hanging out with you. We don’t really do it anymore.”

“I’ve …” He trails off, and Skye can tell he wants to fiddle with his hands, but he doesn’t. “I’ve … been here.”

“Yeah,” Skye says. “I know.”

“You’ve been here.”

“I know,” Skye says again, brows furrowing. “It’s just …”

“Different?” he supplies.

Skye’s eyes dart up to meet his, and he watches her for a long moment before looking away. She continues looking at his face even after, eyes trailing over the curve of his cheeks, the dark slash of his eyelashes.

She doesn’t know how to respond, doesn’t know what she’s meant to say. If she’s meant to take it as an accusation or not. Did he mean it like that, or does she just feel like it was? It’s exactly what she’s been struggling with, how she’s been struggling around him, laid out on the table. Things are different, now. He’s different. But maybe she is, too.

Instead of saying that, she clears her throat, goes back to painting his nails, and says, “After this I’m putting some makeup on you.”

After a moment, his lips quirk up, just a little. “Alright.”

“Maybe just lipstick or something.”

“Okay.”

She finishes off the last nail, and then starts blowing over the polish. He jumps, and she can’t help but laugh.

“Th-That’s cold.”

“Yeah, it is. It’ll dry in a few minutes. In the meantime, I’ll pick out a lipstick.”

She lays his hands on the towel, and gets up to go through her makeup box again. He waits patiently as she goes through it, hmming and hawing over her choices. She walks back over to them to hold a few up to his face, shakes her head, and goes back. Finally, she settles on one, not too bright, a pink not unlike his own cheeks when he blushes. She sits before him on the bed again, uncapping the tube, and reaches out to take his face in one hand.

He jerks back, startled, and she sighs. “I’m gonna smudge it if you move.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and stills.

She steadies his face with a hand on one side of his jaw. “Open your mouth.”

He parts his lips slightly, and she shakes her head.

“Nuh-uh. Into an ‘o’.”

She demonstrates, and he follows suit. She carefully applies the lipstick, his stubble scratching lightly at her palm.

“Okay, all done. Now go like this—” She rubs her lips together.

He rubs his together as well, and they come apart with a small _pop_. “Feels weird,” he says.

“Yeah, it will for a bit. You’ll get used to it. Now I think … hmm … I’m thinking a little mascara? Then I’ll be done, and we can take it all off.”

“O-Okay.”

“I mean with those eyelashes you barely even need mascara, I just want to see it.”

She fetches the mascara, and puts that on him as well. After she’s done, she leans back to admire her work, as he blinks his eyes open slowly.

“I have to say, you look pretty damn good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Come look.”

She drags him off the bed and over to the mirror. He stares at his reflection, brows furrowing.

“Here, you gotta—” Skye curls her fingers over her jaw, tilting her head up pensively. “-go like that. Show off your nails.”

Fitz copies her, then snorts.

“What?”

“S’weird.”

“Yeah?” she stands on her tiptoes to see over his shoulder. “Not a makeup person, then?”

He shakes his head.

“That’s fine, we’ll take it off.”

“Maybe—” He stops, lips pursing.

“Maybe …?”

“W-We could- uh—” He waves his hand. “Keep this?”

“The polish?”

“Yeah. I-If you want.”

Skye drops back down to the flats of her feet, eyebrows drawing together. “This isn’t about what I want, Fitz.”

He turns to face her slowly, hands twisting together.

“We’re doing this for you. To find something you feel comfortable with. This isn’t about me.”

“Y-Yeah,” he mumbles, looking away.

She watches him for a few long moments, but he doesn’t look back at her. “Do you want to take the polish off?”

Slowly, reluctantly, he nods.

“Okay.” She shrugs. “We’ll take it off. No big deal.”

She sits him at her desk with a packet of face wipes and a bottle of polish remover, and heads back to her closet to find the next thing to try. She can’t help but look back at him, though, watching silently as he removes the nail polish with his unsteady hands.

-

They try a lot of things. A lot of tops, a blazer, one skirt, some hats. They go through a lot of Skye’s wardrobe. Her personal favorite was the flannel jacket and the beanie, but she could tell Fitz hadn’t really been comfortable with anything they’d tried. Some things were better than others, but nothing felt quite right to him.

Fitz has flopped onto the bed in his boxers, staring glumly up at the ceiling. They’ve been at this for a while, and they’re both getting frustrated. But Skye has an idea.

“Okay, come here,” Skye says.

Fitz doesn’t move.

“Just one last thing.”

With a heavy sigh, Fitz hefts himself up and plods over so he’s standing in front of her. She angles him so he’s in front of the mirror.

“Okay, close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

He gives her a look, but complies.

“Arms up.”

Again, he complies, and she slips something over his head.

His arms drop, and then he freezes, feeling the cable-knit under his fingers.

“You can open your eyes now.”

Slowly, his eyes open, mouth popped open just a little. He stares at himself in the mirror, and she stands behind him, then leans up so she can rest her chin on his shoulder, watching his expression.

“How about that?” Skye asks.

“Th-This is …”

“Yours? Yeah. I stole it while you were in the hospital and never gave it back.”

He finds her eyes in the mirror, a question on his face.

She shrugs against his back, hands coming to fist in the back of the sweater. “It was comforting. Reminded me of you. I wear it to sleep sometimes.”

His eyes trail back to the mirror, and he stares at them both. Skye wraps her arms around his waist, and watches them as well. It feels good, being so close to him. Him letting her be close. She’d missed it. She’d missed it so much.

“Fitz,” she says softly, after a minute. His gaze meets hers. “Do you … Are you …”

He watches her steadily.

She gives a short sigh, trying to find the right wording. “I’m not really sure how to ask this,” she admits, “but … are you actually uncomfortable with the way you are, or do you just feel like you should be?”

Fitz stills, and then pulls away. Skye lets him. He walks away a few feet (not able to go much further in the small room), turns back, mouth gaped, hands wringing. He looks at her, looks away.

“I-I’m not sure how … how t-to answer that.”

Skye watches him, and marvels at how young he looks, in the big, blue sweater and the starry boxers, his hair sticking up because of how much he’s been running his hands through it, his eyes just the slightest bit watery. She watches him, and feels young, too. Too young to be dealing with this. Too young for them to have gone through so much. Sometimes she feels like she’s older than anything. Older than the bricks in the base they call home, older than the big oak tree at the entrance, older than the dirt it grows from. Sometimes she feels old, ancient, and weary.

But right now?

She feels small. Impossibly small. Young and fragile.

She can’t help but ask, “Is this … just about the gender stuff?” because that hadn’t been all she was meaning, and they both know it.

Fitz sighs, long and tired. “Kind of? I- I guess.”

She waits for him to continue, and eventually he does.

“I- I feel … like—” He swallows harshly, and quickly raises a hand to banish a tear from his eye. “I f-feel like … Like I’m not … _enough_.”

“Not nonbinary enough?” she asks.

“Yeah. B-But … not … anything? Enough? Not enough. N-Not- Not … good enough.”

“Fitz.” It escapes as a whisper.

“A-And I … I’m _different_ , Skye.” He spreads his arms, as if showcasing it. “I _am_ , I’m- I’m _different_ and … and everyone can see it, b-but … I feel like …”

Skye blinks back the sting of tears, knowing it’s not the time or the place. This isn’t about her, it’s just time to listen.

“I feel like …” His arms drop. His hands bunch up in the fabric of his sweater. “Everyone can see it, but … they can’t- they can’t see _me._ ”

Skye draws in a breath, pushing her lips together. She nods, and swallows, working to keep the tears out of her voice. “I’m sorry.”

He gives a sad smile, staring down at the floor. “Yeah.”

“I’ll do better.”

Fitz’s head jolts up, eyes wide. “I’m- I’m not … saying it’s your _fault_ —”

“I know,” Skye says. “I don’t care whose fault it is. I’ll do better.”

Fitz stares at her for a moment, then looks away, hand coming up to scratch through his hair.

“You don’t deserve to be feeling like that, Fitz.”

“I …” He bites his bottom lip, thinking, and then pulls off the sweater, shoving it back at her. Skye blinks at it. “You- You can- um … keep it. You can keep it. If … If you want.”

She takes it from him, hugging it to her stomach, and nods. “Thanks.”

“Thanks for … for- um—” He motions to the clothes that are spread on the floor.

“Of course.”

He nods, and then picks up the pants he’d worn in and pulls them back on. He slips on his button-up and starts trying to button it, managing two with shaking hands before he stops. “Can you—”

“Yeah.”

Skye moves forward and quickly buttons the rest, and then they both stand there, not really looking at each other. After a moment, Fitz leans forward and pulls her into a hug.

Skye buries her face against his neck and squeezes him hard enough that she feels the air leave him in a whoosh. But he doesn’t complain. He just hugs her back, breathing in the smell of her shampoo.

They separate after a few long seconds, Skye already mourning the loss of his warmth, and Fitz heads toward the door. He pulls it open when Skye speaks.

“Do you want to watch a movie tomorrow?”

Fitz pauses, the door cracked, and looks back over his shoulder. “Ca-Can I pick?”

“Anything you want.”

He smiles, just a little. “Deal.”

And then he’s gone.

Skye sits on the bed, holding the sweater between her hands, and feels like maybe, despite all the rejected clothes lying on the floor, despite the face wipes caked in makeup, despite the sweater that was his and then hers and is now still hers … she feels like maybe they made progress. And that’s good enough for today.


End file.
